Mike Cannon-Brookeshttp://www.businessinsider.com/category/mike-cannon-brookes
en-usFri, 09 Dec 2016 10:31:43 -0500Fri, 09 Dec 2016 10:31:43 -0500The latest news on Mike Cannon-Brookes from Business Insiderhttp://static3.businessinsider.com/assets/images/bilogo-250x36-wide-rev.pngBusiness Insiderhttp://www.businessinsider.com
http://www.businessinsider.com/atlassian-ceo-mike-cannon-brookes-accel-partners-2016-9$6 billion Atlassian once took a $60 million investment it didn't need so employees could cash out (TEAM)http://www.businessinsider.com/atlassian-ceo-mike-cannon-brookes-accel-partners-2016-9
Mon, 12 Sep 2016 15:30:35 -0400Matt Weinberger
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/5669ed062340f817008b4d05-2400/scott.mike.jpg" alt="atlassian cofounders bell ring" data-mce-source="Atlassian" data-mce-caption="Atlassian cofounders Mike Cannon-Brookes (left) and Scott Farquhar (right)" /></p><p>Business software company Atlassian, now a $6 billion publicly-traded company, &nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/atlassian-files-for-ipo-2015-11">has been profitable since 2005</a>. Better yet, Atlassian&nbsp;did it without doing a traditional round of venture capital investment.&nbsp;</p>
<p>So, in hindsight, it's kind of weird that Atlassian <a href="http://blogs.atlassian.com/2010/07/atlassian_closes_60_million_investment_from_accel_partners/">took a $60 million "secondary" round of funding from Accel Partners</a>, a move that brought Accel partner Rich Wong onto Atlassian's board of directors.&nbsp;</p>
<p>On a recent episode of <a href="http://www.recode.net/2016/9/8/12854474/atlassian-mike-cannon-brookes-australia-recode-decode-podcast-transcript">Kara Swisher's "Recode/Decode" podcast</a>, Atlassian co-CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes explains just why Atlassian took the money&nbsp;&mdash; and why Atlassian would have actually preferred to have taken a lot less cash, especially since it had $55 million in the bank at the time.</p>
<p><span>"It was a very strange negotiation, in reverse," Cannon-Brookes told Swisher.</span></p>
<h2>Getting the band together</h2>
<p><span></span><span>The reason Atlassian took the investment at all was simple, Cannon-Brookes tells Swisher: As they looked towards the long road to an IPO, Atlassian's leadership decided it was time to build out its board of directors.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span>But the fact that Atlassian hadn't taken any outside investments&nbsp;at all, in a time when startups were raising millions upon millions, made it "strangely very hard" to recruit board members, he says. It made people suspicious of whether or not Atlassian was legitimate, he says.</span></p>
<p><span>"People would look at us and say, "Oh, well how come you have no funding?" and "I'm not sure about this company ...," Cannon-Brookes says.</span></p>
<p><span></span><span>And so, Atlassian ended up negotiating&nbsp;a funding round that it didn't actually need, just to smooth the path to bringing Wong on board. Atlassian tried to keep the round small, around $5 million, says Cannon-Brookes, but Accel wanted more equity in the company and tried to ratchet up its investment.</span></p>
<p><span><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/5408747a6bb3f7dc4c087eb0-2048/7984881829_cb10890464_k.jpg" alt="rich wong accel partners" data-mce-source="Flickr/JD Lasica" data-mce-caption="Investors can determine the fate of your employees during an acquisition. MoPub credits Accel Partners' Rich Wong as a big supporter during their sale to Twitter." data-link="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jdlasica/7984881829/in/photolist-daABbn-5BKjDm-nnhN8Z-mRpBn7-jmm3ev-i4Koey-d62Zod-d62YDE-d62YVA-d62YuW-d62YMj-d62Z4W-d62ZeS-9ZqEXD-bqd6Xe-Y6UqV-fTr8a-93y8D-4phpW-bqd8KB-dCgJmq-9ZsjHt-fQtemN-9MC7kk-9wt5mS-9MC7at-9MC85X-anfMxA-anh8Gf-anh9gS-anenfM-anheeN-anepEV-anhgpU-9METRs-9MC6Mp-9MC7Vp-o7WdsJ-vuDEV-and1d4-9uMu5P-8QJczy-8QJcBw-9pUVu9-8Wd5ZJ-ovZH1e-83HFXx-83LJCE-83LZ5Y-83Ho5Z" /></span></p>
<p><span></span><span>Atlassian ended up accepting $60 million from Accel. But an Atlassian spokesperson confirmed to&nbsp;Business Insider that the lion's share of that investment ended up being used for employee liquidity. In other words, Atlassian brokered the sale of stock options from its employees directly to Accel,&nbsp;with the cash going straight into its employees' pockets.</span></p>
<p><span>Accel got the equity it wanted; Atlassian's leadership didn't give up control; Atlassian employees got to cash out their shares almost 5&nbsp;years before the 2015 IPO; everybody was happy. And Atlassian never again took venture capital.</span></p>
<p><span>It's a nice position for a startup to be in, with investors literally negotiating to try to give you&nbsp;more money and you trying to take less. But Cannon-Brookes warns startups not to try to repeat Atlassian's path.</span></p>
<p><span>"So it's not a typical process, and I tell all Australian startups, 'Don't try and copy it.' It was just a thing for the time," Cannon-Brookes says.</span></p>
<h2><span><a href="http://www.recode.net/2016/9/8/12854474/atlassian-mike-cannon-brookes-australia-recode-decode-podcast-transcript">You can read Cannon-Brookes' full interview with Recode/Decode here&gt;&gt;</a></span></h2><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/twilio-enterprise-plan-2016-9" >The company behind the hottest tech IPO of the year has a new plan to make more money</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/atlassian-ceo-mike-cannon-brookes-accel-partners-2016-9#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/bed-bath-beyond-paid-less-than-30-million-one-kings-lane-2016-8">Bed Bath & Beyond paid less than $30 million for a startup that was once worth $900 million</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/atlassian-chairman-doug-burgum-2012-7With An IPO-Ready New Chairman, Atlassian's Next Stop Is Wall Streethttp://www.businessinsider.com/atlassian-chairman-doug-burgum-2012-7
Thu, 19 Jul 2012 07:30:00 -0400Owen Thomas
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/5007c76169beddac28000008-450-300/doug-burgum.jpg" border="0" alt="Doug Burgum" width="450" height="300" /></p><p>Atlassian is announcing a new chairman today: Doug Burgum, the founder of Great Plains Software.</p>
<p>The obvious reason why: Burgum <a href="http://news.cnet.com/Great-Plains-IPO-takes-off/2100-1001_3-200785.html">took Great Plains public in 1997</a> and sold it four years later to <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/microsoft">Microsoft</a> for $1.1 billion.</p>
<p>The not-so-obvious reason why: Burgum, a native of Arthur, North Dakota, who built his company in nearby Fargo, had an <a href="http://microsoft.areavoices.com/2011/06/02/profile-doug-burgum-entrepreneur-and-philanthropist/">outside-the-Valley history</a> that appealed to Atlassian's cofounders, Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes.</p>
<p>We asked Cannon-Brookes who Burgum was replacing as chairman.</p>
<p>"Not sure," he said. "For eight years, the board was me and Scott."&nbsp;</p>
<p>Not much is that formal about Atlassian, a company which has been profitable for the past 40 quarters and which didn't raise any outside money until 2010, when it took a then-staggering $60 million Series A round led by <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/accel">Accel Partners</a>. That's when Accel's Rich Wong joined the board.</p>
<p>In addition to Burgum, the company is also adding former <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/adobe">Adobe</a> CFO Murray Demo and Accel partner Kirk Bowman, a former <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/vmware">VMware</a> sales executive, to the board.&nbsp;</p>
<p>In another era, the Sydney, Australia-based enterprise software company would be a public company already.&nbsp;</p>
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/5007c61e69bedd1a2f00000a/atlassian-charlie-logo.jpg" border="0" alt="Atlassian Charlie logo" width="400" height="300" />With three big offices in Sydney, San Francisco, and Amsterdam, more than 500 employees, and more than $100 million in annual revenues, it's an obvious candidate.</p>
<p><a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/where">Where</a> Burgum's Great Plains made business that helped manufacturers run their operations, Atlassian helps the people who make software pump out the code.</p>
<p>And as everything goes digital, that's pretty much everyone&mdash;from startups to Fortune 500 businesses.</p>
<p>Broadly speaking, Atlassian makes collaboration, task-management, and code-management tools targeted at enterprises.</p>
<p>Like <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/yammer">Yammer</a>, which Microsoft just agreed to buy for $1.2 billion, or GitHub, a code-management startup that just raised $100 million from <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/andreessen-horowitz">Andreessen Horowitz</a>, Atlassian relies on bottom-up adoption of tools like HipChat and Jira.</p>
<p>A mention of Yammer draws a broad Australian sneer from Cannon-Brookes. "Their business model is extortion, isn't it?" he asks, referring to the way Yammer limits companies' abilities to manage employees' Yammer usage unless they pay up.</p>
<p>Atlassian prides itself on a promise that it won't call customers unless they ask. It's achieved nine-digit annual revenues without employing any salespeople.</p>
<p>At the time Great Plains, which made enterprise software for small and medium-sized businesses, <a href="http://news.cnet.com/Great-Plains-IPO-takes-off/2100-1001_3-200785.html">went public</a>, it was doing about $80 million a year in sales. When <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/salesforce">Salesforce</a>.com filed for an IPO in 2003, it expected to hit $100 million.</p>
<p>Microsoft and <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/oracle">Oracle</a>, which took about as long as Atlassian to hit $100 million in sales after getting their start in the '70s, went public shortly afterwards.</p>
<p><strong>Don't Miss: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/atlassian-san-francisco-office-tour-2012-7">An Exclusive Look Inside Atlassian &gt;</a></strong></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/atlassian-chairman-doug-burgum-2012-7#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p>